As information technology has rapidly progressed, computer network centers such as server farms and server clusters have become increasingly important to our society. The server farms provide efficient data processing, storage, and distribution capability that supports a worldwide information infrastructure, which has come to dominate how we live and how we conduct our day to day business.
Typically, at a site where numerous computers are connected to a network, the computers and related equipment are stacked in racks, which are arranged in repeating rows. In conventional systems, the racks are configured to contain computer equipment having a standard size in compliance with the Electronic Industries Alliance (“EIA”) “rack unit” or “U” standard. Each computer would have a height of 1U, 2U, or some U-multiple, with each U corresponding to approximately 1.75″.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional rack 100 measuring roughly 19 inches wide, 30 inches deep and 74 inches high. This rack 100 is formed of a rectangular frame structure having four vertical supports 102 (two in the front and two in the back), each support 102 having a plurality of holes 104 (typically rectangular) formed along its length. Horizontal rails, which are used to support each individual component to be mounted in the rack, are attached to the vertical supports 102 using cage nuts that are passed through the holes in the supports. Walls may be attached to the sides and top of the frame structure and doors may be provided on the front side 105a and back side 105b in order to provide a complete enclosure for the rack system.
Each computer mounted in the rack 100 may comprise a computer chassis supporting a main board. The main board may be alternatively referred to as the motherboard or system board. The main board comprises the primary printed circuit board (PCB) of a computer. The basic circuitry and components used by a computer to function are generally either contained in or attached to the main board. The main board typically contains the system bus, processor and coprocessor sockets, memory sockets, serial and parallel ports, expansion slots, and peripheral controllers.
Conventional rack-based computer systems typically include a plurality of I/O connectors mounted onto the motherboard and accessed on the back side of the computer chassis. In some systems, I/O connectors may be accessed on the front side of the computer chassis. During installation of the computers into the rack, these I/O connectors may be coupled with the end connectors of corresponding I/O cables. For example, a conventional network I/O connector on a motherboard may be a female RJ-45 socket into which a male RJ-45 cable may be inserted in order to provide network connectivity for the computer. In other instances, the I/O connector may be a serial port which is mated with the end connector of a serial cable. Regardless of the type of I/O connector, this conventional design typically requires that an operator first insert the computer into the rack and then access the back side of the computer to manually connect and route the I/O cabling. Thus, an operator generally accesses the front sides of the computers via the front door of the rack enclosure and accesses the back sides of the computers via the back door of the rack enclosure.
With the increased densities of rack-based computer systems, the number of cables for a single rack can be overwhelming. In addition, when a single computer is removed from a fully installed conventional rack system, all of the cables connected to that unit must be uncoupled from the back side of the computer before the unit can be removed. Numerous cable management systems have been proposed for organizing the various cables, but these systems generally do not alleviate the need to manually connect the various I/O cables to the I/O connectors in the computers.
More recently, there has been interest in “blade” servers that include processors and memory located on a motherboard which can be inserted into a slot provided in a chassis mounted in a computer rack. In these systems, cooling, power, storage services, and network services may be accessed through a vertically-oriented backplane contained in the chassis and shared among a collection of blades. These “blade” servers may include an I/O and/or power connector on the back side of the motherboard which can be “blind mated” with a blind mate connector located in the backplane. “Blind mating” refers to the act of indirectly making these I/O or power connections by simply inserting the computer into the desired slot. The insertion force applied to the server during insertion into the rack causes the I/O connector on the back edge of the motherboard to mate with the corresponding I/O connector in the backplane.
In some “blade” systems, the I/O connectors on the motherboard are connectors complying with the CompactPCI standard. In conventional systems utilizing this blind mating, the motherboard is typically a vendor-specific, custom designed motherboard having the I/O connector mounted directly onto the printed circuit board forming the motherboard. A disadvantage of such a design is the cost associated with CompactPCI connectors and custom-designed motherboards.
Various manufacturers have different motherboard or main board designs, and these designs may further change as new processor and chipset technologies evolve. However, a computer system manufacturer may have an existing design for the computer chassis and rack, and may wish to utilize the existing chassis and rack design with the various main board designs available on the market in order to minimize development costs. Similarly, an end user of these rack-based computer systems may have already made an investment in the existing chassis and rack design and may wish to maintain consistency in the chassis and rack deployment while taking advantage of motherboard and processor advancements as additional computer systems are purchased in the future. In addition, it may be desirable to obtain the benefits of the blind mate connections of blade-type systems while utilizing industry standard motherboard designs.